Thursday, October 22, 2015

Over the last 2 years, I've been missing playing a 28-30mm scifi wargame, ever since I stopped playing 40k, for several reasons, and haven't found a replacement for that particular "slot" on my wargaming habits until recently.

Then I came to know about this new game being developed by Warlord Games, and it has being growing on me steadily, as new renders and miniatures come out. Mainly, I really like the high-tech setting, with its utopic societies, the clean lines on the visual of the models, non-creepy aliens, all of which feels to me kind of Star Trek in style, and therefore its only natural that I become fond of it (!)

For my first army, I picked the Panhuman Concord, but I also have plans on building several others, as there is a lot of cool minis on the other factions that I think will be fun to paint.

Currently, the game only offers metal kits, which means prices are somewhat elevate, but for what I understand, Warlord will be releasing plastic kits for at least the troop options (which are the bulk of what you'll need, anyway) of all factions over the next year.

Two factions, the Concord and the Ghar, are already seeing their first plastics with the actual release of the game, which is happening on november when the Starter Set begins shipping worldwide (it's currently available to pre-order on the Warlord website). Up until now, the game has been out as a Beta version of the rules that could be freely downloaded by anyone interested.

Now, back to my Concord army, I chose a white paint scheme for them, for I've seen several white Concord from other people on the Antares group on facebook, and it was obvious to me that they look awesome that way (ok, so I'm not very original, shame on me!).

Here they are. First, the X-Launcher team:

Strike Squad One:

Command Squad:

The actual commander is the model on the background, on the right of the pic, I should probably have placed him in the front for this shot, as dictates the dignity of an army commander (!), but, oh well, here you have a nice close up of one of his bodyguards, anyway.

Plasma Light Support Drone:

Plasma Cannon Drone:

The sinister NuHu:

The NuHus are an evolutionary spin-off of the human race, beings thoroughly integrated with the Imtel, the super-machine that controls every aspect of the human life in the Concord.

Targeter Probes:

Strike Team Two:

A few shots from the back of the models, to show off all the great detail on them:

Monday, October 19, 2015

Following on with my project of the Dominion War, I acquired a Deep Space 9, from the Eaglemoss collection. This model is the closest in scale to the rest of my ships that I could find around.

Currently, Wizkids also produces a large scale model of this station, but that is way too big, while this one is only slightly on the short side, making it an easy choice in the end.

Here's my station after an upgrade to its painting:

Here is the factory paint job, which is pretty good as it is, only lacking in contrast/shading:

What I did was give it a coat of black wash, then drybrush it with light grey. I also applied some green glaze to the details in yellow (I think they look cooler in green) and then finally painted each single window you see on that model, including the entire outer ring, which was a pretty tiring task, but definitely helped bringing the model to life.

Here are a comparison pic to help show the scale of this model. It sits next to a Romulan Talon (about 90m long), a Cardassian Galor (481m long) and a Ferengui D'Kora (366m long). The DS9's diameter is 1451m, according to most sources, which means my model is very close in size, when compared to the rest of my collection.

Here it is next to a romulan warbird:

Speaking of romulans, I'll be showing my romulan fleet here on the blog soon, and it features those huge warbirds from Eaglemoss, some talons as that one from the previous picture, and a handful of Attack Wing Valdores.

Friday, October 16, 2015

We played a game of Pax Stellarum at our club a week ago, featuring a battle between a Romulan task force, reinforced by some Ferengui allies, against a Cardassian fleet.

The Ferengui, troubled by the frequent cardassian incursions to their territory, signed an alliance with the Romulans, always too eager to stablish a foothold on the Alpha Quadrant. A Romulan armada was then dispatched to help secure a particularly hot zone on the Cardassian-Ferengui border, and was promptly met by a considerable Cardassian force.

It was a game of about 1800 points per fleet, which played over 6 turns and lasted for a little over 3 hours. The cardassians deployed their ships en masse, while the romulans left some ships in reverse, and maneuvered to flank their enemies.

On the pic above, a D'Deridex sprints forward to try and flank the enemy by maneuvering around an asteroid belt. Below, the romulan ships left in reserve:

The cardassians set their engines to high thrust and push forward torwards the combined romulan-ferengui forces.

The cardassians get in position to unleash their phaser fire on the romulans and ferengui, while a single warbird moves around the asteroids to fire at the rear of their formations.

The exchanging of disruptor/phaser fire in the centre of the battlefield severely damages the flagship warbird, which ends up being destroyed shortly after. The romulans concentrate their fire against the cardassian Keldons, the enemy's command ships, so to guarantee superiority of Command & Control on the allied side. On the other hand, the forces in reserve are taking too long to arrive, and the lack of guns is taking it's toll on the romulan fleet.

The cardassian armada, like a shoal, gets surrounded by romulan and ferengui forces.

The remaining warbird arrives on the 3º game turn, and dashes torward the enemy formations.

The cardassians are losing ships fast, and push past the romulan lines and around the asteroid belt, chasing the rear of a warbird, while using the asteroids as a shield screen against the recently arrived D'Deridex.

The Valdore enters the battle on the 5º turn, and now the cardassians use their superior maneuverability to turn around and avoid that side of the battlefield, while trying to score some kills on the talons chasing their formations.

The closest warbird receives a critical hit to its Starboard weapons' system, and is now unable to fire to its right. Instead of trying to pivot such behemoth in an area full of faster enemy ships, the romulan captain accelerates into the protection of a nearby nebula cloud, so to maneuver more safely, while leaving the fight to the other remaining warbird and the Valdore.

Romulan D'Deridex firing through the asteroid belt at the tiny cardassian Hidekis - not an easy shoot to accomplish!

At the end of the 6° game turn, both fleets had lost more than half their initial hull points and had to take Morale Checks. The Romulans passed and the cardassians failed, which means they leave the field and the romulans claim the victory.

We then realised that we had added up the cardassians' remaining hull points wrong, and that they actually had to take a Morale Check on the turn before, already, but that didn't impact the result of the battle anyway.

In the end, it was a pretty balanced battle, making for a very entertaining game. I was in command of the romulans, and destroying the cardassian command ships early in the game secured me the initiative on every game turn, which helped compensate the late arrival of my reserves.

My opponent realised that his tactics of advancing with all his squadrons in a single block wasn't very productive, and that he didn't make good use of the cardassians superior maneuverability and speed until late in the game.